The short version
Arizona cities are creatures of the state. They exist because the Legislature allows them to, and they have only the powers the Arizona Constitution and state law hand them. Scottsdale got as much independence as an Arizona city can get when voters adopted a charter on October 31, 1961. A charter brings home rule: the city can organize its government and run purely local affairs its own way.
The catch is a phrase courts use constantly: matter of statewide concern. When the Legislature passes a law on a subject the courts treat as statewide, that law beats any city ordinance, charter or not. Lawmakers have applied that label to subjects ranging from gun ordinances to grocery bags to what a neighbor may do with a house.
Why it matters in Scottsdale
Three recent episodes show how far the state reaches into city business.
Short-term rentals. In 2016 the Legislature passed SB 1350, which from 2017 barred Arizona cities from banning short-term rentals. Complaints about noisy “party houses” followed in neighborhoods across the Valley, Scottsdale’s included. A 2022 law, SB 1168, let cities require licenses, and Scottsdale’s council adopted its licensing ordinance on October 25, 2022. The city can license and fine; it still cannot say no.
Rio Verde Foothills. After Scottsdale stopped selling hauled water to the unincorporated community on January 1, 2023, the Legislature passed SB 1432, signed June 19, 2023, setting up a standpipe district to buy water through Scottsdale’s system while a longer-term supplier came online.
Axon. The council rezoned land near Loop 101 and Hayden Road for Axon’s headquarters campus in November 2024, and residents gathered more than 20,000 signatures to force a referendum. In April 2025 the Legislature passed, and Governor Katie Hobbs signed, SB 1543, which made the rezoning unnecessary and ended the vote. The 2025 page tells that story from the city’s side.
The enforcement tool: SB 1487
For most of Arizona’s history a conflict between a city and the state went to court the ordinary way, slowly. SB 1487, passed in 2016, changed the pace. Any single member of the Legislature can now ask the attorney general to investigate any ordinance or official action of a county, city or town. The attorney general has 30 days to report. If the action violates state law, the city gets 30 days to fix it, or the state treasurer can withhold its state-shared revenue, money the taxes and shared revenue guide shows is a large slice of any city budget. If the answer is unclear, the attorney general takes the question straight to the Arizona Supreme Court.
The first big case was Tucson’s practice of destroying seized guns; on August 17, 2017 the court held that firearm regulation was a statewide concern and Tucson’s ordinance had to yield. Bisbee’s plastic bag ban was next: a 2015 state law had barred local rules on bags and other “auxiliary containers,” the attorney general found Bisbee in violation in October 2017, and Bisbee made its ban voluntary rather than lose its state money.
Other limits cities live with
Cities also cannot levy a sales tax on residential rent since January 1, 2025, and they must work around Prop 207, the 2006 voter initiative that makes a city pay owners when a new land-use rule lowers the value of property they already hold. Prop 207 is why Scottsdale’s zoning changes tend to add options rather than take them away.
How the charter bargain was struck
Arizona’s 1912 constitution was a populist document, and it gave cities more room than many states did. Any city of more than 3,500 people can write a charter, submit it to its voters and then to the governor, and govern its municipal affairs under it. Scottsdale waited until 1961, ten years after incorporating, and used its new home rule to write the sign and design codes that still define the city. The council-manager charter guide covers that document.
What the constitution did not do was define “municipal affairs.” Courts have filled that gap case by case, and the test they apply, whether a subject is of statewide concern, tends to favor the Legislature. Firearms, taxation and land use have all been pulled at least partly into the statewide column.
The 2016 turn
Before 2016 the state preempted cities now and then. That year’s session made preemption systematic: SB 1487 gave every legislator a direct line to the attorney general and put a city’s shared revenue on the table, and SB 1350 took short-term rental bans off the table the same spring. Supporters argued that a patchwork of local rules burdened businesses and property owners across a single state economy. City officials argued that the people closest to a problem should solve it and that the revenue threat was a blunt instrument. Both arguments still run through every session.
Axon and the referendum
The Axon case added something new. Scottsdale’s charter, like the state constitution, lets voters refer a council decision to the ballot, the power the voters and ballot measures guide describes. The council approved Axon’s campus, with about 1,900 homes and a hotel, 5–2 on November 19, 2024; opponents filed more than 20,000 signatures in December; and the vote was set for 2026. SB 1543 did not overturn the referendum directly. It required any city of 200,000 to 500,000 people to allow hotels and multifamily housing on land zoned like the Axon parcel, without a public hearing, for an “international headquarters” employing more than 2,000 people at more than 125% of the county’s median wage. With that, there was no rezoning left to vote on.
Mayor Lisa Borowsky, elected in 2024 on a slower-growth platform after the council under David Ortega approved the project, asked the governor to veto the bill. After it became law the council weighed a lawsuit, then in November 2025 approved a 4–3 compromise with Axon that cut the housing to 1,200 units. A citizens group sued, arguing the law was unconstitutional special legislation; in May 2026 a Maricopa County Superior Court judge upheld it. For a city that protected its mountains by public vote, from the McDowell Sonoran Preserve to the 2018 charter amendment guarding it, it was a sharp lesson that the last word can come from Phoenix.